Doug McIntyre: 100 reasons to save money toward your long, long life

A few years back The Wife and I were invited to the 90th birthday party for the legendary pianist, Bill Miller.

Miller accompanied Frank Sinatra for nearly 50 years, and yes, that is Miller's lonely, bluesy, solo piano underscoring a recorded miracle, Sinatra's definitive version of Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen's, "One For My Baby."

"It's quarter to three, no one in the place, except you and me " OK, enough singing.

We were thrilled to be there, but what I remember best about Bill's bash were the paper napkins and party hats with "Happy 90th!" emblazoned on them.

That was my first 90th birthday party, and I remember wondering, how many 90-year-olds must there be to create a market for party favors?

A lot, as it turns out, with more on the way.

By percentage, the fastest growing demographic group in America are centenarians.

The Census Bureau says the number of Americans age 100-plus has doubled in the last two decades and will double again by 2020. We currently have 72,000 100-year-olds, the most in the world, and demographers claim we could hit 4.2 million by 2050.

Maybe Larry King should have hung on a little longer.

Futurist Sonia Arrison writes of the many radical changes to come in her book "100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything, From Careers and Relationships to Family and Faith" and while we all dream of a long, healthy, happy life, we never dreamed it would come at such a steep price.

With gas at nearly $5 bucks a gallon, how are we going to pay for an extra 35 years of living?

A new study "Were They Prepared For Retirement?" by James Poterba of MIT, Steven Venti of Dartmouth and David Wise of Harvard, claim nearly half of Americans die with less than $10,000 in assets.

Not cash in the bank or mattress, total assets. As in everything they own.

On Tuesday, the L.A. City Council voted 14-0 to approve a pension reform plan that would scale back pensions and raise the retirement age to 65 for new hires, exempting of course the unions that matter to politicians, the LAPD, LAFD and DWP.

Predictably the SEIU and nonexempt unions are not happy. The obligatory lawsuits have been threatened and the clock is ticking until the inevitable cave-in by the council.

When Labor talks, L.A. politicians fold like a map.

But the clock is ticking on all of us, not just public employees. We're an aging nation with too many counting on a safety net from another era.

Social Security is a time traveler from FDR's world, a world where life expectancy topped out at 64.

FDR himself dropped dead at 63.

Many private retirement plans are based on the same outdated model.

Every American family, each of us as individuals, has to plan for the financial challenges presented by an extended life span. It's a nice problem to have, but it is a problem.

While the best things in life might be free, groceries aren't.

Doug McIntyre's column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. You can reach him at Doug@KABC.com.